Saturday, 27 September 2014

by @JoBrodie, brodiesnotes.blogspot.com (this is an update of an earlier post)

Recently I was surprised to find a tweet in my notifications page that didn't @-mention me, it got there because the tweeter had included the link of an earlier tweet that I'd sent.

I use desktop Twitter (Twitter.com) and Echofon on iPhone and have only
experienced this notification on the desktop version. It seems that
others have also been experiencing it for the last few weeks and it may be
something that Twitter is rolling out to everyone.

What is it?
If you include in your tweet an address link that looks like this
https://twitter.com/JoBrodie/status/514147218799222784
then the person whose name is in bold may well hear about it, on their notifications page / tab.

Why is this of interest or concern to anyone?
People have previously used the method of including a tweet's address to draw attention to a tweet's content indirectly withoutnotifying
the person. When this is done to point to something that someone's said,
covertly, it is sometimes known as subtweeting (the term "subtweeting"
covers a range of Twitter behaviours though).

What's changed?
Previously
no-one would be notified if this happened, now they will. Of course people have always been able to search your tweets, if they're public, and see
what you've written anyway but it wasn't brought to their attention
('surfaced') in quite the same.

What can be done?
Firstly be aware that sharing tweet URLs now seems to be equivalent to @-mentioning them. Whether or not this is a good way of including people in a conversation or of just annoying them will depend on the circumstances but best to know that they may see it.

Assuming you want to 'subtweet' covertly then the goal is to share the URL without triggering a notification.

Below
are suggestions that I think will let you send a
tweet without flagging it up. Remember though that if your tweets are public the person you're 'quoting' can always see your tweets (even if you've blocked them) so this isn't a foolproof method to let
anyone snark with impunity.

Some methods are a little bit fiddly. To
be honest if you want to be that secretive it's probably best to email
people! But this post isn't really about the practical, more about the
feasible - I'm interested more in the changing ways in which the technology behind Twitter works.

Sneaky workarounds

1. Take a screenshot
A picture of the link or the tweet won't trigger the notification.

2. Break the address
Twitter
treats web addresses (and hashtags) as clickable things - it recognises
that a string of words is a web address and automatically turns it blue
/ underlines it, makes it clickable and makes it point to the relevant
address. Just stick some characters in the link to stop this from
happening - make sure that the person to whom you're sending the tweet
knows how to mend it again (or the link won't work!).

3. Send it by DM
Although Twitter generally doesn't let you send many links via DM it does let tweet links go through fine. (But of course you can actually send any link by DM if you break it, as outlined in 2).

4. Use DoNotLink.com
This
hides the URL and means that it probably doesn't currently trigger the notification (I've tried it and it doesn't, but not tested it to destruction, and Twitter is forever tweaking things). Incidentally you can cloak any URL this way so, for example,
if you want to share the link of Widget.com's page without flagging
this up to Widget Co (if they have a Twitter search running on 'widget'
they'd come across your tweet) you can use this.

Note
that other URL shorteners (bitly, is.gd, t.co etc) fail on this front. They won't hide
the link for anyone searching, though I don't know if they will or won't trigger the notification.5. Put the tweet you want to share in a Twitlonger post (but not in the first line).
Twitlonger
lets you write more of a blog post than a tweet (you just log in by authorising it to interact with your Twitter account and start writing). It then posts just the first 120 or so of your post and adds a link so that people can click and go and read the post on the Twitlonger site. If you ensure that the link you want to share is placed after 120
or so characters it won't appear in the autoposted tweet and so
can't trigger anything.6. Share the minimum info needed to recreate the tweet
This is potentially risky because you'd have to include the person's name and if they have a search for that they'll see it immediately (whether or not this method triggers a particular 'your link has been mentioned' notification - I've not tried it and I don't think it does but not certain). If you and the person know who you are talking about you only need to share the link's string of digits to recreate the link.

All tweet addresses have the same format:http://twitter.com / NAME / status / NUMBER
- if you know the NAME and the NUMBER you can recreate any link from
scratch.

For my tweet above you only need JoBrodie and 514147218799222784 to recreate the full link.

"Is there any academic literature on stock photos? I'm aware of amusing curations (women laughing alone with salad etc) but also curious about the interesting linguistic thingmes it brings up when you search for a word or phrase and it brings up unexpected stuff. I always find myself wondering about any future info-archaeologists and what they might make of how we see things / ourselves, through stock images ;)"

Previously, I wrote about this sort of thing in terms of a picture representing an idea (or more literally a word) and how this had sparked some creative fun at work...

"Years ago I helped the then editor of our research magazine (Research Matters, from Diabetes UK) find some illustrative images to go with short summaries of our various bits of research. I remember in particular looking for things that conveyed 'kidneys' to match the section on our kidney research.

There are some standard-issue visual tropes for kidneys, including pictures of actual kidneys (either photographs or drawings, including the urinary system), kidney-shaped metal dishes, kidney beans and even, if you're so minded, steak and kidney pies.

But the concept of kidneys can also be put across by images of clear water - after all the job of the kidneys is to filter and clean blood, and conserve things that the body wants to keep. Even the concept of a fuse might be used in relation to the role the kidneys play in blood pressure and how this can damage them. You might even get away with 'balance' in that our kidneys keep everything in order.

Picking up on the last point there it also crossed my mind that selecting images for an article (and thinking laterally about words, phrases and what the images say) is a teeny, tiny bit like being a film music composer, in the sense that you're 'writing to text' (as opposed to 'writing to picture' as in film) and can choose to use a straightforward image that's clearly aligned to the text (perhaps equivalent of using happy music in a happy scene, or sad music in a sad scene) or selecting something a little more obscure to highlight an aspect of the text that's perhaps not explicit.

Here's a lovely example of a piece of music matching something less obvious in the scene (and perhaps making it more obvious to the audience) -

"One of the classic examples of this kind of [film music] writing is found in David Raksin's score to Force of Evil discussed in some detail in chapter 3. In the final scene the main character, Joe (John Garfield), is seen running in the street, then along a great stone wall and down a huge flight of stairs. Yet the music here is not "running" music -- Raksin has scored the emotional rather than the physical character of the scene. Joe has been running, figuratively, throughout the film; it is only now, as he begins the search for his dead brother's body, that he finds any sort of quietude. Raksin reflects this psychological point in his slow music for this sequence." Source: Roy A Prendergast The Aesthetics of Film Music (mystery online PDF)

Further reading
I like the genre of reframing of pictures, in the contextual 'caption competition' sense rather than actual frames. Here are a couple of examples I've noticed recently that have amused me.

Friday, 26 September 2014

Over the last few years I've been noticing it in television programmes such as Jeeves and Wooster, Sherlock Holmes (with Jeremy Brett and co) and on Foyle's War. Possibly it's an ITV / Granada / ITV3 thing. I've been trying to find out what it is.

Anyone watching Casebook of Sherlock Holmes on ITV3 - do you know the name of the upholstery fabric on the sofa? (!)
— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) July 29, 2012

Here's what looks like an extremely similar pattern on a chair that Edward Hardwicke's sitting on (as Dr Watson), episode 'The Priory School'.

Monday, 15 September 2014

Below is an email sent to members of CHAIN (Contact, Help, Advice and Information Network for people working in health and social care which includes NHS but also lots of other things) announcing the creation of a new special interest group for public health folk who are interested in cycling.

If this sounds like your thing contact CHAIN (details below) and see if it is :)

----Cycling for Health & Wellbeing - New Special Interest Group launched (target group: public health)

On 4th
September, (which was Cycle to Work Day in the UK), we launched a new
special interest group focusing on cycling as a means of promoting
health and well-being. The aim of the group is to enable those of us who
are enthusiastic about the potential of cycling to contribute to health
and well-being to share relevant experience, resources and
intelligence. It will also create the possibility of members
collaborating on projects or bids for funding relevant research.

As
a CHAIN member who has indicated your interest in Public Health, you
are invited to join the new sub-group. Should you wish to do so, simply
reply to this message with the words YES PLEASE.

We are also keen
to identify several people who would be willing to contribute their
enthusiasm in a small way to the new special interest group. This is not
demanding, but would simply involve keeping an eye on the topic and
alerting us to relevant developments or opportunities that you come
across. We will use this information to circulate targeted messages as
appropriate. Anyone interested in the possibility of helping the new
special interest group in this way should e-mail: david.evans@chain-network.org.ukto arrange a phone conversation.

We
look forward to welcoming many recipients of this message into the new
special interest group, and to supporting a vibrant and hopefully
valuable new component within the wider CHAIN network.

Best regards,

The CHAIN TeamPS.
By all means share this message with any of your colleagues or students
whom you think may be interested. Those who are not already members of
CHAIN are welcome to join, and if they contact us at enquiries@chain-network.org.ukwe will send them the appropriate link. Thanks!

Regards,

Wendy

CHAIN Manager

CHAIN - Contact, Help, Advice and Information Network – is an online internationalnetwork for people working in health and social care.For more information on CHAIN and joining the network please visit website: http://chain.ulcc.ac.uk/chain/index.html

Sunday, 14 September 2014

This is how I did it, on my set up. Your set up may vary and you might need to tweak things.

First catch your file path - copy

Open Finder and select the folder you're interested in saving stuff to, eg Me/Files/Folder/Subfolder- a neat trick I spotted, on doing the below, is that if there's a subsubfolder it it's better to get the file path from that (for some delightful reason the Mac ignores the folder you're currently in and gives you the file path for the one above it, so if you really want the one you're in, go one level down).

So go to Me/Files/Folder/Subfolder/subsubfolder and select subsubfolder (or any other file within Subfolder if you don't have a convenient subsubfolder)

Command Left-mouse-click will bring up the Options, look for 'Get Info' and click that

Copy and paste everything that appears in 'Where', it will have lots of /s in it

Save a file (from another programme) in that location - paste

Save your file as Save as and then in the 'Save file as'* window that opens up, click Command+Shift+G - this brings up an option to 'Go to the folder..' - at which point paste your folder's file path in and hit enter.

You'll now be either in the folder you want, or no more than one away from it.

Good luck.

*I'm saving a Thunderbird message as an .eml file so I've got 'Save Message As' on mineTroubleshooting
These are the websites I used to find out how to do this, there are other suggestions in them so if this doesn't work have a look there and hopefully something else will. I found both by typing into Google Finder Mac copy path and Finder Mac paste path

When do I use this?
Since I don't see people regularly complaining about how fiddly this is and since I do these types of keystrokes constantly I have to assume that I'm in a minority so if anyone's wondering "what on earth do you want to do that for?" here's why.

Sometimes I want to save to 'Folder X' a new file that's arrived by email attachment. When I use the 'save as' option on the attached file the saving location the system currently points to may be a different folder (ie whatever I used last).

This doesn't worry me in the least on a PC as it's literally the work of sub-seconds to copy the file path (C:/blah/blah/blah/FolderX) from the File Manager ('Windows Explorer') that I already had open, paste it into the location option in the 'save as' window, hit return and let the new file join its folder-mates successfully.

It doesn't seem to be the work of seconds on a Mac and I've been (a) saving stuff to do in the office on my 'real' computer or (b) bludgeoning my way through it by just double-clicking each sodding folder to get to where I want to save it, while cursing.

I've found the above workaround, it's still not as efficient as Windows (and of course now I have to remember a bunch of new key strokes to do it) but it seems to work.

This is so ridiculously easy on a PC with Windows 7 and is one of only several reasons that my next laptop wil be Windows and not a Mac. Others include the fact that the 'Paint' equivalent seems to be unusable, 'Notepad' is OK but I don't like it very much and the lack of a forward delete key is almost defenestration-worthy. Mildly more fiddly to get a # symbol too. Oh and 'Print Screen' on a PC is a single button click whereas on a Mac you have to click four to capture the screen or window in a format that you can then paste (ie one that has been copied to the clipboard). I think it's only three if you want to save it to the desktop. Possibly the other way round, don't really care, awful ;)

Wednesday, 10 September 2014

From the #dontstopthemusic tag last night it seems that lots of people enjoyed James Rhodes' programme in which he tried to get hold of some musical instruments and support a stronger teaching infrastructure for children in schools. Music teaching appears to be ... somewhat undervalued in some schools and, according to snippets of speeches from a music teachers' conference this problem seems to be fairly systemic. Here's a great post from Mark Robinson's Teach Kids Music blog on 5 Valuable Lessons From James Rhodes’ Don’t Stop The Music.

There are a few publications from the GOV.UK website that people might find interesting. If you're looking for their publications go to https://www.gov.uk/ then scroll to the end for the Publications link, which as I've linked it you could just click of course, then type in your search terms or browse by topic.

As it happens I was lucky enough to go to a school where music was a big thing, however I'm afraid to say it did nothing for me and I was frankly a bit rubbish at it. Unfortunately I was the not-very-musical daughter of very musical parents. The only instrument I took up voluntarily was the flute but there was compulsory violin and piano and, being reasonably tall, cello (the decision to include me in cello lessons was made by the music teacher turning up to an art class, getting us all to stand up and picking the four tallest in the room). I also managed to get into the choir - the teacher employed a sort of 'exception reporting' system, assuming that all of us were choirable until proven otherwise. Sadly I was able to pick out the middle note from a three-note chord and hold a tune so I got roped into that too.

However as an adult I love listening to it, buying it and going to see it performed live - I don't think my childhood experiences have any impact on that, as I rarely wish I could join in ;)

There's an awful lot of flannel written or spoken about music and the developing brain and I'm wary of an over-reliance on functional MRI (fMRI) and other brain scanning techniques used to propound the idea that learning a musical instrument is great 'because we can see how the brain lights up'.

I'm not wary of fMRI otherwise (just on overextrapolating conclusions) or of the idea that learning a musical instrument is great, it is - though not for me. Here's a post from violinist Eos Chater which talks about a range of personal and social benefits of learning music Ten Lessons for Life through Music Education.

Monday, 1 September 2014

This is an update and a repost of an older post from 2010, copied in full below with redirect on old one.

EDIT: 8 July 2012 - this post has gone through several revisions and is now more generally about livetweeting events. There's a nod to practical aspects too as well as a little bit on the ethical aspects of livetweeting conferences, which was my original slant. I've attended (live, or virtually via hashtag) numerous medical research conferences and wince whenever anything is a bit overhyped or, as I say below if "unpublished pilot data is reported as more certain than it is."

Added 1 March 2015 34. Let's have a discussion about live-tweeting academic conferencesGreen tea and velociraptors (Jon Tennant)13 November 2014http://blogs.egu.eu/network/palaeoblog/2014/11/13/lets-have-a-discussion-about-live-tweeting-academic-conferences/ "To tweet about someone’s work without their knowledge or permission is
disrespectful and unethical. Several people have stated that they
consider the default to be ‘tweetable’ – are the authors aware of this?
If not, and you haven’t checked, you better show some god damn courtesy
in future and not do anything you are not explicitly permitted to do."

Added 6 October 201433. EIGHT tips for using Twitter around health-related eventsHealth Summit / Inis CommunicationsDate unknown but seems to coincide with #mHealth13 eventhttp://www.iniscommunication.com/PDF/mHealth13.pdfI like (8) Be a Twitter advocate - remind other advocates that they can also tweet from the event.

Added 25 March 201328. Thwarting spammers on hashtag livetweeted eventsMy own blog22 March 2013http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/thwarting-spammers-on-hashtag.html Type into Twitter's search, or smartphone Twitter apps' search boxes a keystring that tells Twitter to return tweets containing the hashtag but not the spam links, eg#hashtag -x.co where x.co is the root of the spam addresses (Twitter will ignore x.co/abcd and x.co/efgh)

27. Twitter guidelines for #ukcc21 in 2013Oxford2013, The Cochrane CollaborationDate not given but assume March 2013-ishhttp://oxford2013.cochrane.org/twitter-guidelines Encouragement to tweet at the conference with a useful reminder not to assume everyone following you knows what the hashtag you're tweeting with means, so tell them every now and then. Added 20 July 201226: Using free tools to capture a handful of tweets or a bunchMy own blog19 July 2012http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/using-free-tools-to-capture-handful-of.htmlBit self-serving I suppose (given that I wrote it) but I have made quite a study of capturing event / hashtagged tweets and I think this is a pretty clear explanation of how to use some of the free tools while acknowledging that there are other paid-for options. Added 20 July 201225: Gender discrimination at CHI 2012Oopsohno blog19 July 2012http://oopsohno.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/gender-discrimination-at-chi-2012/Although my collection of posts is now more about some of the technical and social media aspects of running an event its original direction was more about the ethics of sharing (via social media) live comments from speakers at scientific events, in relation to unsettled science particularly in the area of medical health research. Sarah's post covers a different type of ethics - the way that gender differences can be unwittingly reinforced if we don't watch out for it.Added 20 July 201224: Reflections on eventsMark Braggins' blog24 June 2012http://markbraggins.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/reflections-on-events/

Themed checklists for different aspects of a conference and unconference events with some good advice and, as the title suggests, reflections on making an event run smoothly for those attending physically and virtually.

Added; 8 July 201223: How to Live-tweet from an EventSocial Media Today6 July 2012http://socialmediatoday.com/node/586166Very good advice for event tweeting, focusing on the three phases of an event: before, during and after (a lot of people post stuff a few days after an event so if you're trying to capture stuff about said event don't 'shut things down' too soon). Also useful pointers on tools you can use on laptop or smartphone to autotweet the hashtag, eg I use Tweetchat on my laptop - sign in with Twitter and whenever you tweet in that window it automatically appends the hashtag, saving valuable seconds ;)

I came across this because of the MoreNiche affiliate marketing website which I keep a keen eye on (as they're selling a variety of products but are a bit shy about publishing the evidence for them) and spotted that their people go off and speak at events, including this expo. What impressed me about this was the prominence given to hashtags at the event - each session has its own hashtag and the top of the agenda has a banner which explains what a tag is and reminds people to check the session tag for each event they go to. Pretty good.

Less about blogging at events and more about the social benefits that can arise from Twitter and blogs making it really easy for people who haven't yet met one another in real life to do so. Obviously these tools are helpful in discovering likeminded folk online in the first place.

Good example of a conference getting everything nicely hooked up with the hashtag, delegates' twitter handles, good communication etc.

I think when I started this blog post back in Feb 2010 I was rather waiting for this sort of thing to become the norm. It probably has in the geekier / science-ier conferences, fingers crossed that this trickles to all the other conferences where delegates might like this sort of thing. Obviously I appreciate that some delegates don't give two hoots about tweeting and blogging etc :)

Practical advice for official events tweetists and how best to prepare and parcel up the workload. For example this particular hospital event had speakers whose photos were taken before their speech so that these could be sent out as they started, along with their name and job title. Good points made about linking to stuff on the organisational website (and a reminder to make sure in advance that pages you might want to link to are up to date). Also highlights practical things like being able to point to a page on parking information.

Also it is, as the blog curator has noted, rather well written - very clear. And it's written in precisely the sort of way that managers probably like the look of - what went well, what they'll do differently next time. Good template I should think.

Interesting look at the recording of tweets (by Storify in this case) and subsequent analysis of their content by Wordle.

"So, live Tweets, to me, represent the thinking of people as they are in the situation; there is no time to reflect, to consider meaning or to parse it into an alternate interpretation: a live Twitter feed can approximate being inside the mind of people present at an event, and you can bring a range of tools to bear on this record and use it to notice things which might not otherwise have been obvious."

Examples of social media, including Twitter, use at a massive (30,000 attendees) cancer conference including guidance on slides from speakers who were happy for their output to be microblogged, and disucssions on setting up some 'best practice' guidelines for organisations. Mention is also made of the real-time tweetstream which might be available as an adjunct during someone's presentation - I am coming round to the idea that this can be more of a distraction than a benefit, although I do quite enjoy seeing them. I like his use of the terms intrasession tweeting (to describe tweeting from within a session), intersession (describing interaction with tweets from another session in some cases leading people to migrate to a seminar with more interesting content) and extrasession tweeting (describing general helpful information, shared via Twitter).

"Attendees will register for your event if their contacts are attending. In the future, knowing if friends or business associates are attending an event will become part of the attendee’s decision process. Social media tools that check to see if my Linkedin connections, Twitter followers or Facebook friends are attending an event already exist. Over time, I think that we will see more of these tools implemented in events."

Not about liveblogging but general information about news reports of conference presentations - "The current press coverage of scientific meetings may be characterized as 'too much, too soon.' Results are frequently presented to the public as scientifically sound evidence rather than as preliminary findings with still uncertain validity. With some effort on the part of meeting organizers, journalists, and scientists, it will be possible to better serve the public."

Perspective from a very different field - discussions on intellectual property, tweeting increasing the marketability of a conference and one of the commenters raises the idea that "obscurity is a bigger problem than piracy." That commenter also found benefit in reading back the tweets from his talk so he could see where he'd managed to get his point across, and where not.

Article on a particularly unpleasant experience at a conference where twitter took more of the centre stage than the presenter due to a combination of an unfamiliar set-up, dreadful lighting, fidgety crowd and misunderstandings. Basically, when liveblogging goes bad.

Conference organisers might as well take the lead on the social media for their conference - deciding on a sensible conference hashtag (and if it's stupid, delegates will create their own ad hoc) and publicising this on conference material beforehand if at all possible - or at least posting a few tweets containing said hashtag, from their official channel. As the post above points out, it also helps with the social aspect of the meeting.

Post considering the practical benefits of having a clear hashag - social aspects (meeting up, particularly at a smaller event) are important but the long term benefit is that any tweets containing hashtags can be aggregated and stored, as a record of the event and the links that were shared.

Edit: 8 July 2012 - since Twitter changed its terms of service in 2010 it's become much more like hard work to collect hashtagged tweets and unless you use a paid-for service, or have coding skills and a server you'll probably have to do it slightly manually.

A very interesting take from the perspective of a presenter, who read the tweets afterwards. In this particular session attendees were asked not to tweet the substance of the talk because it may have been taken as legal advice (as a lawyer was speaking), this possibly meant that people found other things to tweet about, not all of it helpful.

Really positive post on the benefits of liveblogging a conference; the benefit being for the blogger as well as for any public audience. Ed tweeted from #wcsj (World Conf. Sci Journalists) and found it to be a useful experience for himself. Probably the content of the presentations put this type of conference in a very different category from the Cold Spring Harbor one, but this post provides a record of one person's enjoyment at being involved in this way.

This very much echoes my experience of livetweeting from both Science Online conferences in London, #wcsj and a couple of other science communication things I've been at.

Very interesting post - scientists may prefer a forum in which they can discuss pilot data with their peers without the fear of having some, as one of the commenters puts it, 'blogdouche' tweeting everything. Some of the comments are... quite robust.

Intriguing idea of having some sort of icon on presentations (or abstracts) which indicates that the speakers are happy that their talk can be liveblogged.

Comment 3 is a peach. Comment 5 raises an interesting issue. Comment 13 contains this eloquently brief summary - "Figure out the policy (I'd suggest that bloggers and media follow the same rules and it be the same rule for ALL sessions) state it up front, in the program, on the website and in the registration package. Done. Finished. Put it to rest."

Sensible consideration of the appropriateness, at different types of conferences, of tweeting or liveblogging. Plenty of comments adding additional perspectives and Ruth Seeley's (comment 1) makes very good points.

For me the take home message from all of these discussions is that it's probably important for conference organisers to at least have had a bit of a think about where they stand on liveblogging - I'd prefer that they weren't too restrictive though (however Commenter 8 disagrees with me). In the context of medical research charities (my perspective is from charities who are members of the AMRC - Association of Medical Research Charities) my concern is - perennially - that unpublished pilot data is reported as more certain than it is.

Daniel MacArthur's own blog emphasising that he feels Genomeweb's complaint (see #2 below) was a valid one and that conference organisers can't really expect to hold news media and bloggers to different standards. In this case the result was that the conference organisers clarified their policy on liveblogging.

"As the number of scientists engaged in online media continues to grow, it is crucial that meeting attendees be aware in advance of what their responsibilities are regarding communication of results."

There are some really good points in this clearly written post on the wider themes of conference attendees engaging with the presentations - more positives than negatives.

Commenter 3 expresses concern that the CSHL guidelines were unduly restrictive in that they required anyone reporting to gain permission from the speakers (possibly impractical for tweeting purposes). There's perhaps something in the argument that blogged conferences get more publicity...

News report from Science (magazine) on Daniel MacArthur's experience of liveblogging from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory meeting. The news service Genomeweb was a bit puzzled that journalists had been asked to sign forms restricting what they could report whereas other attendees didn't have this restriction (they're not given a form to sign).

A plea from a blogger for conference organisers to provide free wifi. The conference organiser replied pointing out that the venue charged £20 for a wifi connection, although in the US the blogger has experienced conferences where each seat has a power socket and free wifi.

I certainly think free or very inexpensive wifi should be available if you want to encourage people to share content about and related to your conference. Possibly the building itself will dictate the number of sockets but no harm in finding out where they are and letting people know. See also #18 above, which has a checklist for conference organisers.

This refers to using Twitter on twitter.com the website (ie on a browser) and may or may not be relevant to those using third party apps on tablets or phones.

Update 8 March 2015
Oh for asterisks' sake, Twitter's tweaked it again. Using the technique below didn't work for me today (I ended up sending this tweet which has no credit to the person who originally wrote it) so I did the following and it worked instead.

(Note you can click outside the tweet and it will disappear, but clicking on the 'new tweet' feather / quill icon will bring u a new tweet window with your unsent text in it, so it's fine to toggle among different windows / tabs to collect all the bits you need to send the tweet).

It worked. The below is kept for my prospective historical irritation.

EDIT 5 October 2014
Five weeks on from writing this post Twitter seems to have changed things again. I've seen several tweets referring to a cartoon by UK cartoonist Matt about human rights - the cartoon doesn't automatically appear at all unless I click on the tweet.

I'm leaving the one below as a small version as I'm not sure about the ethics of sharing a full-size version of his cartoon.

I'm afraid I've really no idea how you'd neatly copy and paste the text of the tweet and the address of the picture, such that the picture would show up in your own tweet, so that you could add a comment and manually retweet it. Can't see a good reason for Twitter to make this difficult, though I can see plenty of reasons.

Remember you can share a link to a tweet (the person may be alerted with a notification when you do) but I've no idea what happens if you share a link to the 'pbs.twimg' link.

Copying and pasting the tweet looks like this. Haha what a mess. Adding a comment to a tweet can be a valuable part of the Twitter ecosystem and I've written previously in praise of manual (comment) retweets.

Here's what it was like five weeks ago when it was still doable, though fiddly.

1. Manually retweeting a tweet containing a pic.twitter link
When Twitter publishes a tweet that contains a pic.twitter-hosted image (not all images are affected, it depends if where it's hosted) it hides the picture's address (URL) and just presents the image within the tweet.

This means that if you want to retweet it and add a comment the method of copying and pasting the text doesn't work, because the text lacks the picture's URL. I just found this out.

This is what the tweet originally looked like...

...and here's what I ended up sending out...

...note lack of picture!

What you need to do is go to the original tweet and click on the picture, which will then look like the version below - you can see there's a tweet below it with the full pic.twitter.blah web address, you need to include that in your comment-retweet. (This isn't necessary for tweets with instagram or similar links because Twitter doesn't automatically display the picture while hiding the URL).

Perhaps Twitter is gradually making it more of an uphill struggle for people to do anything other than press the RT button but I often prefer manual RTs for a variety of very good reasons.

I don't especially like the ones where someone's just copied and pasted the text then stuck nothing but an "RT" in front of it and have seen other people comment that it's "stealing' the tweet (if that one gets RTed instead of the original you get all the glory). This can be true, however that's probably not the only reason people are doing it. While not forensic it traps a copy of the tweet in case later deleted, it also captures it into your own timeline making it easier to find again in future in your own archive.

But I'd still rather see the tactic done with at least a comment added.

2. Clicking on some pic.twitter pictures just makes them smaller - a solution

Usually when you click on an online picture it gets bigger, not pic.twitter pictures in tweets though. This has been background-irritatingly me for a while, until I heard of a solution which I've embedded below. Thanks Unity!